Friday, July 21, 2017

Quilting by the Lake 2017 - Off the Wall Friday

Greetings from Syracuse, New York!!

Cynthia Corbin

Here I am sitting in my on campus suite with
all the images of the week swimming in my head. And what a week!! Between a great class, a super quilt show and some amazing programs, its enough to jump start anybody's creative life!

I'm taking Cynthia Corbin's The ABC of Composition. Basically what we are doing is taking simple text or words and abstracting them out to form new compositions. So the idea of the class really isn't about using words in their normal recognizable form but to have them morph into something new! Let me tell ya - So - Much - Fun!! Cynthia is such a great teacher. She manages to meet a student wherever they are on their creative journey and give them the encouragement to succeed. Sadly she is retiring though so I'm blessed to be able to take one more class with her. Luckily for me - it all sort of clicked this week.

On Monday, I worked on an exercise using a short word and make it into a small composition. It wasn't too hard and a great way to warm up for the week. I chose AIM. In this piece, I played with soft and hard edges and used a diagonal composition.

On Tuesday, she asked us to start a new piece where the word was not recognizable. So I chose the Viva. Now let me just stay that Cynthia suggested we work simply. Somehow that did NOT work out for me! I came up with a nice simple composition and then it all sorta got out of hand!! (Note to self - if a teacher suggests working simply - then you might want to work simply)

Here is the original idea. See the VIVA?

And then I decided it needed a complex background (negative space).(Of course I did!)

THEN it was toooooo complex and started to take over the whole piece. So I needed to add quiet spaces which made it much strong.

I'm not quite done piecing it all together - but I will be before its time to pack up!! I wish you could see the body of work my class has been doing. It was like an explosion of color in the room. So many interpretations of the theme. It was fascinating to watch everyone work!